I'm meeting with a few friends tomorrow at 8am to go to a forest about ten miles from here. Normally this time of year if the weather has been right, you find good quantities of pennybun or bay boletes there. We never really pick gilled mushrooms, as the edible ones are often bland and the poisonous ones, well... it's really easy to get your gilled mushrooms wrong and take home something that's either going to give you quite horrible diarrhea or put you in a coffin. So we stick to boletes, because they taste better and there are only one or two poisonous ones as such, and the worst they will do is send you to the bathroom for a few hours.

I'm in the same boat but honestly, I think I do better work at the weekend anyway. Simply because it's the weekend work becomes much more less stressful even if you'd rather be doing other things - with the reverse being true of Mondays where it is always a bit shit.

Anyway, I'm treating myself to a nice pizza tonight, finding a good film to watch and that'll hopefully be as exciting as my life gets. Being boring is underrated.

>>413026That might work for you if you're usually in an office; I work from 'home' which means if I want to get anything of substance done I have to go sit in a café somewhere away from the Internet of Distractions.

I managed to find a Devils Cage, or 'Clathrus Rubar', by chance a few years ago; apparently they're quite rare. I was chuffed to bits considering I'd only recently got into mycology. All accounts tell of it smelling foul, like death, but I thought it quite sweet. I'd found it partially decomposed so maybe it the smell changes through the lifecycle.

There are even weirder things, such as the Common Stinkhorn. It smells of rotting flesh as well. Somehow, that's a thing with many mushrooms. I guess it's so they can attract flies which will then carry the spores longer distances than if they just got blown on the wind.

My ex's nan was from Germany and she told me that there used to exist a superstition in Germany that Common Stinkhorns were the fingers of the dead which they were raising from the grave to warn the living to lead virtuous lives. Apparently, those mushrooms even have a nickname in German which translates to "corpse finger".

You probably wouldn't eat them in the first place just because of their repulsive smell and taste, but no, it doesn't appear that way. Because in some countries, people eat them in their "unhatched" state when they haven't broken out of their shell. It is then called a witch's egg. Apparently, the taste is somewhat similar to horse radish and doesn't yet have that rotting flesh quality.

Anyway, we went mushroom hunting this morning, and we were able to pick a sizeable amount of the aforementioned pennybun and bay boletes. I will probably turn my share into cream of mushroom soup this afternoon.

Also, there was one area where there was just a sea of freshly grown young deathcaps. Unfortunately, you can't quite make out their ghostly pale green hue in this picture, but when you see them with your own eyes, that green colour is a very believable sign that those mushrooms probably won't be good for you.

One reason why many Eastern European and Mideastern immigrants get this wrong is that the deathcap mushroom can be greatly similar in appearance to the European White Egg, which grows chiefly in continental regions of Eastern Europe down to the Mediterranean and the Mideast. Some specimens of deathcap may not exhibit a green hue at all, and these are then mistaken for White Eggs by people who know them from their home countries.

The wife is horrendously ill and the weather is horrific so instead of going out to a burlesque show she's staying in bed producing a copious amount of mucus from her face. Whilst I am having a tandoori grill and some beers whilst watching shit on Youtube.

One of my best friends is preparing to move to the U.S. for two years to take a job offer which his company made him. He works for a well-known maker of CPUs and will be spending two years working in Austin, TX.

I didn't find Texas to my liking when I was there a few years ago, but that's just me.

>>413047I don't understand what's going on. If the referendum is illegal then the Spaniards just refuse to recognise the result. How exactly is the act of walking to a building and putting an x on piece of paper an illegal act under Spanish law?

It's a very messy situation. The ruling coalition in the Catalan parliament forced through legislation to allow the referendum, bypassing parliamentary rules. The opposition parties are boycotting the referendum, so the result will be meaningless, but is likely to be used by pro-independence groups as a claim to legitimacy.

The Spanish government are extremely nervous about independence movements, partly because of the economic importance of Catalonia, but also because of the history of Basque separatism. The Basque separatist group ETA were responsible for the majority of daft militant wog incidents in Spain between 1970 and 2010 and had strong ties to the Provisional IRA. ETA agreed to disarm in April of this year, but there are some fears that radical splinter groups could return to violence if there's a significant shift in the political climate.

The heavy-handed police response could be counter-productive, but the Spanish government think that they have to strongly oppose the referendum to prevent any possibility of the result being seen as legitimate.

>>413051>but the Spanish government think that they have to strongly oppose the referendum to prevent any possibility of the result being seen as legitimate.
The problem isn't so much the legitimacy but what might be done on the back of it. The tactic of organising a sham referendum and acting on the back of it has more than enough recent precedent that Madrid will be concerned that if they simply let this referendum happen and merely object to the result, the Catalan government will just go ahead and try to extricate itself anyway.

Yes but essentially, you would have the backing of the people to become your own state/country, but it would be meaningless as the Spanish constitution doesn't allow separation referendums.

With the Scottish referendum, on the other hand, there was a clear legal basis in the event that the majority would have voted leave. It would have been a binding decision which we would have had to respect. Then again, it's different because Catalonia is an Autonomous Community of Spain. Autonomous Communities are in the end similar to our system of four different countries within the United Kingdom, but they are still much more closely tied into Spain's administrative structures. There is no possibility for them as per the Spanish Constitution to just leave the country of Spain.

Also, Catalonia is one of the wealthiest and most productive Autonomous Communities in Spain in terms of GDP and per capita income. It stands to speculate that if Extremadura or the Canaries were to hold such a referendum, there would be much less resistance from Spain's central government.

>Rajoy’s government argues that any referendum on Catalan independence would be illegal because the country’s 1978 constitution makes no provision for a vote on self-determination.
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>The Spanish constitutional court, which has suspended the referendum law pushed through the Catalan parliament earlier this month, is looking into whether the law breaches the constitution.

>Speaking on Wednesday morning, the prime minister defended the government’s actions, saying Puigdemont and his supporters were trying to “eliminate the constitution” and were ignoring the law.

>“Logically, the state has to react,” he said. “There is no democratic state in the world that would accept what these people are trying to do. They’ve been warned and they know the referendum can’t take place.”

That still doesn't answer the question why these people have been arrested; after all, it's disputed if the referendum even breaks the law as such, pending a verdict by the Constitutional Court.

In the end, I guess it's just the Spanish central government showing its muscle to deter similar movements in other autonomous communities. Plain and simple. And the Spanish government is right to be worried because Spain as we know it has a history of local separatism on account of incorporating various different formerly independent kingdoms and nationalities in a much more profound way than the United Kingdom.

>>413053>Yes but essentially, you would have the backing of the people
Yes, that's what everyone says after a disputed referendum. Rebel leaders in two provinces in the Donbass claimed the backing of the people to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. Maduro claimed the backing of the people to start rewriting the constitution in Venezuela. Brexiteers won't fucking shut up about the result last June.

So in the end, independence referendums or other referendums on matters of regional sovereignty are often enough a case of let sleeping dogs lie. Few of them will be legally binding, some people gamble away their political careers on them (as did ARE pigfriend), and at the end of the day, they will leave behind resentment and more tension and do very little to actually make the majority of people happy. Just look at our whole Brexit mess now. Or look at the Crimea referendum (yes, there was actually a referendum, fake or not; the media don't like using that word and prefer the term annexation, but there actually was a referendum).

It's a bit like when things aren't going so well at the moment with your missus and you ask her "Would you rather be with somebody else?". That question is pointless, it's dangerous, and there is a chance that either she will be hurt by you even saying something like that, or you will be hurt and begin to hate her, if you don't already, if she says yes. It should never be asked by anybody, because it has such great potential to actually make things much worse, especially if your relationship is really already circling the drain.

Not saying I'm against referendums as such. Just saying be careful what you set in motion.

The weekend was going really great, up until four o'clock this afternoon when my grandmother phoned to let my family know that grandad has had a bad fall, cracked his head and suffered bruising to both of his eyes.

The worst thing about all this is that my grandmother has dementia, so when my Dad popped round to help, my grandmother didn't remember calling us to let us know.
My Dad told my grandmother to phone her sister so that she wouldn't be alone.

At this very moment, knowing our shitty luck, she's probably sitting in the house all on her own, wondering what has happened to her husband.

i'm considering signing up as a member of the Coop. they say you become a shareholder but that's bullshit. You just save a few percent of your shopping. Is there anything I should know before signing? I've heard supermarkets follow phone signals around shops to aid route planning and stock placement, and that kind of thing. Is it a bad idea to tie my name to how much bacon i buy? Reading this back sounds like a ridiculous thing to worry about.

It's a balance you have to weigh personally. Imagine your name on a list with a note like "chronic bacon and lube purchaser" and see if that feels worth the discount or not. For me it would be, because I don't care anymore.

Hell, my phone worked out where I work without me ever telling it, which should be horrifying, but at the same time it tells me how long my commute is going to be every working morning which is very nice.

>>413092>i'm considering signing up as a member of the Coop.
Bear in mind that contrary to popular belief there are several different co-operatives around the country operating as distinct entities. The Co-operative Group is the largest and what most people mean when they refer to 'The Co-op', but itself has corporate stakeholders such as Central England Co-operative, Midcounties Co-operative, Lincolnshire Co-operative and so on. Through the Co-operative Group, they all use the same branding and procurement in order to project a more competitive retail presence, so two stores may look the same and stock the same products but be run by completely independent businesses. Annoyingly due to this they each have separate membership schemes that affect things like which stores you can use your card in and earn money back. In recent history this has affected Group members who earn fuck-all because the Group was making a loss.

>they say you become a shareholder but that's bullshit.
I don't know how accurate the term 'shareholder' is when applied to a consumer co-operative society but yes, that is effectively what you become as a member. In return for your £1 deposit you get the right to vote at their AGM and appoint the board of directors, just like any other shareholder. Of course hardly any members actually exercise this right, which is why the more pertinent benefit is the one you have identified:

>You just save a few percent of your shopping.
The Co-op's Share of the Profits is so low that it effectively functions like any other supermarket's loyalty card scheme. For every £1 you spend you get a point, and every point is worth ~1p of dividends in the form of vouchers off your shopping.

>Is it a bad idea to tie my name to how much bacon i buy?
If you already hold a loyalty card with any other supermarket, you are already doing this. While supermarkets can hold a frightening amount of information on your shopping habits though this scheme, I've not really known them to use it for anything other than trying to sell you more stuff, which is hardly unexpected.

>Catalonia will declare independence from Spain in a matter of days, the leader of the autonomous region has told the BBC.
>In his first interview since Sunday's referendum, Carles Puigdemont said his government would "act at the end of this week or the beginning of next".

The rules changed a couple of years ago. You now get a 5% rebate on all co-op own-brand products and services, with the exception of four independent co-op societies - Central England, Chelmsford Star, Midcounties and Southern. You'll also get paid an annual dividend, if and when the co-op group actually starts making a profit. IIRC, these independent co-op societies are all using the old green and blue branding rather than the new blue and white.

This weekend is the first weekend in about six weeks for me that I've got nothing going on. No unfinished work stuff to do at home (which was usually the case lately), no favours to do for friends or parents, no going to the pub. Just a whole weekend of doing fuck all. I will spend Saturday and Sunday in my jammies watching telly and playing video games all by myself and eating unhealthy frozen or tinned food.

I strongly believe that everybody neeeds a weekend like this from time to time for sanity maintenance.

>>413097I see that was actually one year ago. I didn't know because I'm a Central England member. And so that's just 5p for every £1 you spend. A significant difference from the previous scheme I guess.

I shall spend at least part of today festering under a duvet after drinking a bottle of wine last night. Unfortunately I have someone's birthday event to go to later. Why do women always insist on expensive bloody cocktails?

Because for them liking a drink is directly proportional to how expensive it was. It is not about the drink itself for them it is about the 'lifestyle', they can pretend they are glamourous. If they get to post a selfie with it on Facebook with #betterlifethanyours all the better.

Why does it always often have to be about that with women? Why can't they just accept that they've got a shit life with a mediocre job, with disappointing pay, and no hope of ever living the good life for real? If you want escapism, follow Kate and William. Or watch The Real Housewives. Just don't believe that your life will ever remotely resemble theirs.

>If they get to post a selfie with it on Facebook

There's a club here in the area which regularly gives away prizes, and one of those prizes is a one-hour or so limousine ride. I saw the limo parked outside the club once, and about three or four girls were enthusiastically running towards it, as it appeared that they had just won the limo ride for that evening. Well, the first thing they did was lean against the limo, and then every single one of them got out her smartphone and took what seemed like dozens of selfies, before they even bothered to open the door and get in. Where the driver then courteously opened the sunroof, so they could stand up in the limo and take yet more selfies.

One of my favourite clubs back in the day - this was over ten years ago - had 0.2-litre prosecco bottles for £7 a piece. And they were selling like mad. Granted, women usually need less alcohol to be off their tits, but still... and a regular size bottle was still £22. You can get three bottles at Tesco's for that kind of money, and not even the cheapest plonk.

That said, prosecco is disgusting any way you look at it. What women like about it, I have never been able to fathom.

>>413166No idea, I had assumed that expensive ales and the like were still a niche 'hobby' or even one dying out considering it's turned from an artisan industry into something even more soulless than standard industrial brewing.

Maybe it is this personal quality aspect that is the problem. I assume everyone would pay more, if they could, for a product with a certain soul or love to it but sooner or later you end up with nothing but nouveau riche imitations which lose what made it special in the first place. You can go to a proper cocktail bar that prides itself and get a perfect Martini but those have been replaced over the years by fruity ice and sugar that hold the same quality as a slushie.

This is without getting into the binge mentality that drives modern consumerism but I already sound like enough of a pretentious snob.

I just made an apple cinnamon spice pie. From scratch, no baking mix. I felt like experimenting.

It takes me back to living in the U.S. for a year. If there's one thing the Americans know how to do, it's making fucking delicious apple cinnamon pie. It's just a certain mix of flavours that is uniquely American. We just don't do it the same way here.

I tried to achieve these flavours mainly by using cinnamon, clove, vanilla extract, orange zest, and brown cane sugar for my dough. And no more than a drop of bitter almond extract to compliment the chopped almonds I sprinkled on top of the apples. It's an "open-top" pie, and there is also a healthy sprinkling of raisins under the apples.

Just got it out of the oven. Smells delicious and the first piece of it tastes pretty amazing.

That's about all that really went into the pie... there are plenty of recipes online that you can also have a look at.

Sorry, really don't mean to be a cunt, but I've just spent almost an hour cleaning up the kitchen after my baking adventure.

In a way, I'm glad that I am single again... my ex would have had a heart attack at the sight of the kitchen... I just tend to be that way. I'm quite a messy cook, and returning a kitchen to its previous state can often take me as long as the cooking process itself.

The missus and I have finally moved from our fancy, and tiny, city centre apartment to a larger, more sensible three bed detatched. We have no plans of ever having kids so it's more space than. We'll ever need.

This is the second night of having been here, and already I've realised how much noise you generate in a modern flat made of plywood and IKEA. I couldn't sneeze without waking her up. But here, the heft of a house a hundred years old absorbs my nocturnal wandering and means I can fuck about downstairs without waking her at all. Also, with us having two spare beds, I can also escape the clammy nightmare that is my better half trying to sleep after a couple of bottles of wine. I'm not sure if this is our steady decline into a life of bleak sexless monotony, or the solution to our one real incompatiblity, which is that she sleeps for about 14 hours a day while I sleep for 6. Time will tell.

>>413170>Maybe it is this personal quality aspect that is the problem. I assume everyone would pay more, if they could, for a product with a certain soul or love to it but sooner or later you end up with nothing but nouveau riche imitations which lose what made it special in the first place.

Meh, Blue moon tastes better than most of the micro-brew stuff and the hipsters all agreed... right up until the point that they realised it was made by Cools brewery and therefore had no added love then they had cognitive dissonance.

Love and soul have no correlation with competence. There is a reason companies get to become big and soulless it is because they started out as little love and soul firms and were better at what they do then all of the other arseholes who might very well love and soul then they do. Make no mistake those little companies want to be big companies they just aren’t as good at playing the game.

You have just formed a fantasy that makes things psychosomatically taste better. The same way your favourite band was better when you heard them live before the main stream had heard of them.

Britain has had "microbreweries" for centuries, they just weren't trendy until the likes of Brewdog came along. My local has two dozen guest ales, mostly from local breweries and mostly for less than £3 a pint. The trendy new breweries have undoubtedly raised the standard of marketing across the industry, but I can't help but think that they've diluted the traditional ethics of real ale. There are far too many hipster breweries charging silly money for "craft IPA" that's really just mediocre session bitter.

With my curiosity sparked after I posted the clip in >>413171 which alludes to Walt Disney having been an antisemite, I did some reading today on the Internet.

Aside from the question of whether or not Walt Disney was a Nazi supporter which is debated at length on the Internet, it turns out that by some interpretations, the whole Disney empire is just a watered down, mass consumerism friendly incarnation of 1930s fascist visions and ideals. And its theme parks are, well, a Disneyfied version of Hitler's envisioned world capital city of Germania.

What I think isn't entirey outlandish is that within these interpretations, there lies a perception of major multinational corporations as deeply fascist entities in and of themselves.

Turns out opera and theatre tickets in the country I'm staying in for a while are super cheap. Just got back from the opera, cost around £11 and had awesome seats so I think I'm going to make a thing of this every weekend. Also wine is like £2 a bottle but that's not a new hobby at all.

>>413184>Aside from the question of whether or not Walt Disney was a Nazi supporter which is debated at length on the Internet

Disney produced anti nazi propaganda films one would presume that would settle the matter.

I feel like this is just the post-modernist edgelord bullshit about how anything in the status quo must be evil, those articles are absurd in logic, to quote;
"Der Fuehrer’s Face (Donald Duck in Naziland, 1943) fails to describe the systemic anti-Semitism of Nazi propaganda beyond mentioning the concept of a master race."
They are saying sure he was critical of the Nazis but he didn't raise this exact points in the cartoon we would like, therefore he must be pro nazi. It seems like the kind of obnoxious shit where organisations have to say they are lgbtq+ otherwise they are obviously homophobic, because only a homophobe wouldn't bring up that they are not a homophobe in something wholly unrelated to the subject matter of sexuality. It is ultimately a cartoon, it is designed as a source of entertainment not a fucking lecture designed to cover all points of criticism. It strikes me as the kind of logic that interprets starship troopers as a pro-fascist movie, because no one expressly yells 'fascism is bad' at the camera. No understanding of subtext 'unless they can over analyse into a critical position', only recognise the most obnoxious of signalling the other way, and no adherence to a remotely objective position entering into the analysis.

>just the post-modernist edgelord bullshit about how anything in the status quo must be evil,

Who's really being the edgelord here though.

>They are saying sure he was critical of the Nazis but he didn't raise this exact points in the cartoon we would like, therefore he must be pro nazi. It seems like the kind of obnoxious shit where organisations have to say they are lgbtq+ otherwise they are obviously homophobic

Bad example. Many known American industrialists in the 1930s to early 40s, among them also names like Henry Ford or Prescott Bush (grandfather of George W. Bush), were not only fervent supporters of Hitler; people like Prescott Bush outright helped bankroll the German regime.

Commercial companies displaying more of a neutral fence sitting stance with regards to LGBTQ rights, on the other hand, didn't generally take part in active discrimination against gays in previous decades.

Then again, the LGBTQ community would indeed do well to accept the fact that some people will remain neutral, if that, to their rights movement. That whole "You're either with us or against us" rhethoric has never been a good idea in any area of public discourse. Just look at America's war on terror. Or certain areas of radical fishing.

>What I think isn't entirey outlandish is that within these interpretations, there lies a perception of major multinational corporations as deeply fascist entities in and of themselves.

I don't see how that can be entirely surprising. I'd say it's fairly obvious that we're slipping into an age of corporate fascism with private organisations usurping national governments in terms of sheer economic leveraging power. Blade Runner has nothing on the future we are drifting into.

But then again, being me is like having the glasses from They Live permanently glued to your face.

>we're slipping into an age of corporate fascism with private organisations usurping national governments in terms of sheer economic leveraging power.

Indeed. And the European Union has already acknowledged that fact by creating the office of a "Google minister", whose job it will be to deal and negotiate with major global corporations on behalf of the EU, similar to a country's foreign minister.

What's really shocking though is that we are all just letting it happen. In times of global workforce sourcing, complete replaceability of every one of us, grinding down on workers' rights (sponsored and lobbied for often by those very corporations) and impending doom for the standard of living of anybody who is employed at all, people are constantly scared shitless that one false move or one too many times they've spoken up against the system (especially on the Internet) will cause them to lose everything. And by the same token, if you're not found on LinkedIn or the Internet at all, with a polished CV and dozens of other great things you have done in the name of employability, you often won't get a job in the first place.

In terms of fascist movements, global corporations have been a much more resounding and enduring success than what Hitler, Mussolini or others were ever capable of. Because they had to use very active and open oppression in order to bring the people to their bidding. Whereas today's "economic fascism" works in much more subtle ways, by causing people to self-assimilate into the system. Nobody's arm gets twisted. Instead, you are constantly made aware of the consequences of not toeing the line. And thus, every single aspect of a person's life is increasingly becoming optimised and economised. One facet of this is the "wearables" fitness gadget trend, but it doesn't stop there at all. We have all been brainwashing ourselves into the mindset of ever more increasing our economic value as individuals. And too few people are asking questions or doubting the system's merits for humankind. Because, again, they have become completely assimilated, and out of what ostensibly looks like their own free will.

From the sound of it you? I'd also accept the answer Jacques Derrida, or the author of the article or anyone else who's core philosophy attacks the idea of facts as purely being an expression of the agenda of the powerful, and therefore mere trifling details to be ignored in forming your conclusions.

If you want to know why women like those ubiquitous fucking awful ridiculously sugary cocktails then look no further than the fucking Scandinavians. It's all those bastard Kopparbergs and Rekorderligs with their sickly berry ciders and the like.

You don't have to bring up the Nazi's and whether companies hate the Jews and that. It's the Scandis. It's always the fucking Scandis. Ruining everything, like they did with IKEA.

>It's all those bastard Kopparbergs and Rekorderligs with their sickly berry ciders and the like.

Alcopops came long before all that though. You've had entire generations of younguns who were raised on alcopops and whose first encounters with alcohol as 12-year-olds were in the form of these horrible sugary concoctions.

I think there is just something in the female brain that makes women tend towards preferring sugary alcohol. In a similar way as men tending to prefer more bitter alcoholic drinks like beer. Maybe it has to do with women being the berry pickers when we were still all cavepeople, while men were the mammoth hunters.

>Ruining everything, like they did with IKEA.

Ikea ruined itself when it went all posh.

When I was born, both my parents were fresh out of uni and didn't have loads of money. And both my older brother's and my first bedroom furniture came from Ikea because Ikea was good quality at affordable prices. Nowadays when you go in there, you'll get sticker shock. They're every bit as pricey as all the self-proclaimed high street shops. They have really just become one of them.